Bachmann: "Flying Imams" attended Ellison party

The Minnesota Independent has picked up on a San Francisco radio transcript in which the frequently fact-challenged Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) claimed six Muslim clerics removed from a US Airways flight were headed to a "victory celebration" for Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a convert to Islam.

The six were briefly detained en route to Phoenix in the Minneapolis airport in Nov. 2006 after attending a conference of the North American Imams Federation. Then-Rep.-elect Ellison gave a speech on Islam and American politics at the conference.

Passengers became alarmed when they began their evening prayers, made disparaging remarks about the Iraq war and refused to sit in their assigned seats.

The KSGO-AM transcript of the April 9th interview, via dumpbachmann.blogspot.com:

Host Lee Rogers: I, I, I’m gonna ask you about some things that are probably old news to you, but to, uh, to the rest of the country, especially here in the western part of the country, uh, there, there are still some mystery attached. For example, that uh, airport taxi driver controversy at, uh, the major airport, Minneapolis airport, did that ever get sorted out?

MB: Ah, yes, ah, the, the taxi drivers were required to go ahead and give people rides even if they carried alcohol, so that was sorted out. And we also were the site of the six flying imams, I don’t know if you remember that-

LR: Oh yes.

MB: The imams, the imams were actually attending, ah, Congressman Keith Ellison’s victory celebration, when he won as a member of Congress. [And the imams went to the Minneapolis airport to leave and go home. While they were there, they were shouting phrases anti-Bush, anti-America and they laid their prayer shawls—er, their prayer rugs out on the floor in the airport terminal, were having their prayers, and um, were making these statements and when they got aboard the airplane, they switched seats, they didn’t go to their proper seats, and they went in the pattern of the nine-one-one uh, um, terrorists who were on the airplanes, and they all asked for seatbelt extenders on their seats, in the airplane, and these weren’t large people. So, uh, there were people on the airplane that became very nervous about these public displays and they alerted the airplane authorities, and so, these six imams were taken off of the airplane. Well, the imams ended up suing everyone on the plane, the whistleblowers, and they said that their civil rights were violated. So that’s been a big mess, that case, and I don’t, I’m not sure, but I don’t believe that that’s been resolved yet.

She also agrees with Rogers who accuses "openly, avowed Muslim" Ellison of trying to stock the Obama administration with other Muslims, another charge which seems to be wholly unsupported by fact.

LR: Minnesota is the first state to have elected an openly, avowed Muslim to Congress, Mr. Ellison. The word is, he is heavily involved in what amounts to a talent search for Muslims to fill jobs of some importance in the Obama administration. What’s the reaction to that back in Minnesota?

MB: You know, I think our, our news media hasn’t, hasn’t put that message out. We have a very liberal new media here in the state of Minnesota and that message hasn’t gone out. I think that most people probably aren’t aware of that.